"Find Frank," Marcus decided. "It's our best hope of breaking this case open. And focus on linking Connor to that brief."

"Will do."

"Have they convened the grand jury?"

"It's set for Saturday, September 2."

Another nine days. Marcus was relieved it wasn't any longer. "We'll arrange to fly out the night before the grand jury testimony, I don't want to leave this secure site before I have to. Could you arrange to come out with Kate and Lisa? I want to review this case from top to bottom one last time. I could use the additional manpower for the flight east."

"Good idea. I'll see what I can arrange and call you back."

Marcus concluded the update call and leaned back against the desk. He was weary to the soul with the twists and turns this case was taking. He looked over at his partner. "It is not supposed to be this way, Someone murders a judge; we're supposed to be able to do something about it. They take out Shari, he gets away with having murdered a judge."

"She'll testiS"

"If we can get her there safely," Marcus replied. "What else can we be doing to find Lucas Saracelli? There has to be something."

Quinn tossed his hat on the table. "Good question, Marcus. I wish I had an answer. We have at best an old picturel at worst one that will no longer be close if he's had surgery done. We know the unique signatures of his MO. But the rest is a bunch of maybes-possibly American born and military trained because of the type of rifle and ammunition he favorsl a probable residence in Europe as most of his contracts have been there. The few clues from the scenes of his hits show he is a man who plans in great detail, studies the area before each hit, and takes as long as he deems necessary to fulfill a contract."

"I hate this."

"Do you want to move her again before the grand jury convenes?" Marcus thought about it, then finally shook his head. "No, you're right about this being the safest place to defend. Moving her will only leave another trail that's fresh. I would rather have our trail go very cold on him."

Going over the problem again wouldn't get a different answer. Marcus pushed away from the desk. "It's late. You missed dinner. I'll let you get to it."

"Shari's in the libra You might want to stop by,"

Marcus raised an eyebrow. There was an unexpected note of concern in Quinn's voice. "Thanks, I'll do that."

Shari was curled on the couch in the libra Without the lights on. That was a bad sign. Marcus leaned against the door frame, trying to decide what was best. She had become noticeably quiet over the last week and it hadn't been easy to draw her out. "You want company?"

His question startled her. She turned to look back, then reached over to click on the table light. "Sorry. Come on in, Marcus. I was just thinking."

He had misinterpreted the situation. He had been afraid she was fighting tears, but her voice was steady, "What are you thinking about?"

"How much can change in a short time. A month and a half ago I didn't know you, there wasn't someone trying to kill me, I had a family intact."

Her tone of voice bothered himl it had a bitterness he had never heard before. But he understood her emotions so well, was glad in a way that she was finally letting heaviness bleed off rather than try to accept it. The stress of what had happened was still coming, was going to break her or refine her before it was over. And the fact she was letting him see the emotion was itself a sign of trust that was a gift to him.

"This was a day Carl always celebrated-the anniversary of his first day on the bench."

The memories-he understood so well how they would appear unexpectedly from the past and bring back the pain. "Shari-I'm sorry"

She sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. "Sit down, I could use that company." She tossed the unopened pad of paper and pen she held onto the couch beside her. "You choose the topic tonight. I'm pretty morose." He chose instead to simply take a seat and share the silence.

"You want to know something funny?" Her voice didn't sound amused.

"Sure," he quietly replied.

"I'm really getting tired of chocolate ice cream."

It took a moment for it to sink in, and then he leaned his head back and burst out laughing. "Oh, Shari."

"What are the odds that you can get some pralines and cream ice cream out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"Are you sure you don't want something easy. like maybe fresh lobster?"

"If that was an offer, I won't turn it down." She turned her head, shared a smile, and then gave a sigh. "I miss my family." "I know. I miss mine too." "Did you hear from Jennifer?"

"She sounds very tired. They were doing another round of bone scans today." He reached in his front pocket for a folded envelope. "Here. I think you ought to see this."

She reached over and accepted it. "What is it?"

"lugsby's ransom demand. My part of it anyway." She unfolded the note, bit back a grin, but not before he saw it. His suspicions had been right. Either Jennifer or lachel had recruited her. "Now I wonder who gave them that idea?"

"It's just a sketch," she replied.

Marcus folded his hands across his chest and watched her. "Sure it is," he said softly.

"I have to admit, I'm not sure I'm up on my Snow White and the seven dwarfs, but which one does this make you?" She looked at the sketch of the character, then back over at him. "Sleepy?"

"Try Grumpy," he replied with a gentle threat.

She giggled. "So if all the O'Malleys got tagged with a seven dwarf character as their clue, how does this get back 1;ugsby?"

"Turn it over."

"'Deliver Snow White to me or Rugsby dies. Signed, The Wicked Witch.'

Ohh, this is good. Who's Snow White?"

"Guess."

She looked at him, then looked back at the note, startled. And then she started laughing as she held up her hands. "No way, I'm not getting in the middle of this. Your family makes jokes an art form."

"You started it. Grumpy indeed."

She passed back the note. "If I'm stuck here, you can hardly be expected to deliver me on the date specified. Who's the Wicked Witch?"

He folded the note and slid it back into his pocket. "At the moment I could labeljust about any of the O'Malleys with that title," he replied dryly, She had a hard time stopping the laughter. "Marcus, I needed that." "We both did."

He relaxed on the couch and simply watched her. "This will eventually be over."

"Not soon enough." Her expression turned sad again, tired. "I've been praying for patience. So far it hasn't worked. Or maybe it has and I'm just having to learn to appreciate the answer."

"Just take it a day at a time, Shari. That's all you can do."

She picked up a document from the stack beside her. He recognized her now dog-eared copy of the brief she had written recommending Carl for the court. "I can understand the hatred that drove Connor to kill. But I don't understand why he followed through with it when he did, where he did."

"Shari, trying to understand Connor's rationale-it will never really make sense."

"Was my family part of his plan?"

"NO."

She looked over at him, moodily, "Did he want to make a public statement? Is that why he killed at the conference and not back in Virginia?"

"We don't know," he said quietly.

"Carl was killed because he was going to make the short list. Daniel had been dead nine months. The timing had to be significant."

He wouldn't lie to her, but he wouldn't support a conclusion that was only a speculation, not when it would hurt her. "If he chose the conference for any specific reason, it may simply have been for the confusion and the time it gave him to escape. We have no reason to believe he ever saw your brief, that he had any way to know Carl had made the short list." "But you're looking for that link." "We're looking."

Marcus watched with concern as she set aside the brief and leaned her head back to look up at the ceiling. How he wished he could strip away the pressure and give her some peace.

"Marcus, how do you cope with the sense of incompleteness? The sense that their lives were cut short? Both Carl and Dad? Time keeps running across events. It's not just the holidays and birthdays, it's the baseball games we had tickets to go see, weekend vacations we had planned." "You loved them, Shari. There is no way to remove that void."

"I know God wasn't surprised. But it doesn't feel like there was much preparation beforehand for the shock that hit. I know it wasn't an accident that had you and Dave and Quinn close by to help, but it's so hard to accept I will never see Dad or Carl again. I still wake up of a morning and for a moment think everything's fine, then remember."

"It would worry me most if you didn't have this grief coming through. Do you still dream about that night?"

She grimaced. "I've been shot in my dreams so many times I think it's like a repeating tape."

"I wondered."

"The dreams no longer make me panic. Maybe that's progress." "It is. Good progress." "How long will it lasO"

"Months, maybe years. I think your prayer for patience is the right one. You need time for the grief to heal, time for the memories to fade in sharpness, time to adjust your expectation for the future. Be gentle with yourself; you'll make it."

She gave a slight smile. "At least here there is plenty of time to pray." "I envy you your ability to believe," he said abruptly, reopening a subject he had avoided talking about for the last week. He was searching for his way back, but it was hard. He had been rereading Luke. It was so hard to set aside the doubts. He just wanted some peace back in his life.

She looked over at him, curious. "Marcus, why do the O'Malleys trust you?" She let him think about it for a moment, then answered her own rhetorical question. "They chose to trust you. You can lead them into harm's way and they'll charge behind you without question. You know that, which is why you carry your responsibility so seriously That's all I'm doing, choosing to trust Jesus even if I don't understand what or why something is happening. Jesus wants you to choose to trust Him again. He won't take that trust you place in Him lightly"

"Have you settled your turmoil about prayer?"

"Part of it. I've at least settled my confusion on how to pray mom quietly trusts and accepts what God does; I want a specific answer and I pray with passion for that. I always thought my problem was that I had to be like mom, and I'm not made that way An issue that matters to me inevitably becomes something I am passionate about."

"What did you learn?"

"Jesus was both. A simple answer, I know, but realizing it was a profound change. Jesus was both trusting and passionate. He brought His petitions with loud groans and tears. He acted like Elijah. 'The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.' Wrestling powerful prayer. And conversely, there was the contentment of knowing He was speaking with the Father who loved Him. 'Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I know that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me.'

"I still don't have contentment over unanswered prayer, but I no longer wonder whether God loves me or if He hears me. If it's a prayer where I speak with passion, God's okay with that, and if it's the quiet trust of a child with a problem, that's good too."

"I'm glad you found some of your answers." "You'll find your answers too." "Trust isn't easy"

"Marcus, who's Jesus? What's His character like? Answer that, it will help." She rested her chin on the couch pillow she had picked up. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

Surprised at the change in subject, he nodded. "Sure."

"What do you dream about for your future? The reason I ask-I've had nothing but a lot of time to think in the last few weeks, about what is important, about what I want to do when this over. Do you ever do that too, when you're stuck on assignments like this?"

What he said was important to her, he could tell from the way she was studying him as she waited for the answer. He hadn't talked about it much outside of the family, occasionally with Quinn. "I want to be director of the marshals one day, Move it forward as an agency, bring more mavericks like Quinn and Lisa in to help rein in the bureaucracy and keep the focus on the nuts and bolts of the investigations."

"You sound very sure of that dream.

"I know where I'm heading."

She glanced away, "What about personally? What about kids? I already know you like them. Do you want a family someday?"

He smiled at the way she tried to make her direct question indirect. Yes, Shari, I would love to have a family with you. They weren't at a place where he could say those words. "Absolutely, And I've thought a lot about someday adopting too. The O'Malleys would spoil them rotten. "Six aunts and uncles. I can see what you mean." "What about you?"

"I would love kids someday,"

He heard the wistfulness. "You'd make a wonderful mom.

"mom would love to be a grandmother."

She'd walked herself into thinking about her Dad. He saw it when it happened. Quietness washed over her. He didn't try to break it. There would be no grandfather for her children.

He finally spoke. "Let it "Yes." She looked across at him and changed the subject again. "I hope you don't lose Jennifer."

He didn't want to think about such a possibility, but he had to. He had to be prepared for it in order to be prepared to help his family, The sadness was overwhelming. And Shari understood it. He looked at her and felt the enormous emotions ease, just for being able to share them. "If the unspeakable ever happens, will you come to the funeral with me?" She nodded.

"Thank you, friend." He wished he had the right to wrap her in his arms right now. And if he wasn't careful, he was going to say the wrong thing. "Come on, it's time you turned in," he wisely decided. She was not always going to be a witness. And that day was not going to come soon enough.

He walked Shari to her bedroom door and forced himself to simply say good night there. Rather than rejoin Quinn, he walked further down the hall to the guest room he was using. Out of habit he picked up the book on the nightstand, planning to read for a while, then sighed and set it back down.

He reached again for the Bible. Take one step forward, feel out if it was safe, then take another step. He felt like he was crawling back, walking on thin ice.

He was finally beginning to understand part of it. Those who believed, believed completely and trusted with abandon. His mom's happiness that he had basked in as a child had come from God. She had flourished in her faith despite circumstances-her spirit had been trusting, her smile always there. Decades later he was still grieving the loss of his mom. That was the most profound fact he had realized. It wasn't faith as much as it was grief. He had lost so much.

Who was Jesus? What is His character? Shari asked very good questions. He settled on the side of the bed and started reading where he had left off.

There would be a future with Shari, if everything worked out just right-he had to cling to that hope. His emotions were so involved that seeing that sadness in her tonight was overwhelming. He wished he could give her something to make the stay here easier. Missing family was something he understood only too well.

When he said Jennifer was doing as well as could be expected, he had been stretching the truth. Jennifer was in the fight of her life and she was at best only holding her own. It was the unsaid reality in Kate's voice, in Rachel's.

At least this ranch was like an island, an isolated spot.

But were their tracks covered deeply enough?

Eighteen.